“In the lower wards (of New York City), where there is a large vicious population, the condition of politics is often fairly appalling, and the (local) boss is generally a man of grossly immoral public and private character. In these wards many of the social organizations with which the leaders are obliged to keep on good terms are composed of criminals or of the relatives and associates of criminals.... The president of a powerful semi-political association was by profession a burglar; the man who received the goods he stole was an alderman. Another alderman was elected while his hair was still short from a term in the State prison. A school trustee had been convicted of embezzlement and was the associate of criminals.” (_Century Magazine_ for November, 1866.) Ostrogorski thus describes the period following Tweed’s overthrow: “The principal instrument of this plunder was the police; they levied a regular toll prescribed by a fixed tariff on all the saloons, houses of ill fame, and gambling hells; extorted money on false pretenses or on no pretenses at all from small traders whom they had the power of molesting. Other perfectly lawful businesses were subjected to a tribute; steamboat companies, insurance societies, banks, etc., paid blackmail in return for the protection accorded to them. The police captains and even the policemen had to buy their places. The government of the city in fact became a huge market in which the officers might as well have sat at little tables and sold their wares openly.” (P. 81.) In other words, the much vaunted reform uprising which overthrew Tweed was without radical or permanent results, because it left the city still at the mercy of the controllable vote.